ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 53 
And when the children have come to realize the geology 
of the farm, when a boulder tells them a story of its 
journey with an iceberg of the glacial epoch, and the bits 
of coral and crinoid joints among the pebbles near it tell of life 
in tropic seas ; when they have learned to the unknown depth think 
down through the thousands of miles beneath their feet, through of 
strata, clear to the mysterious heart of the earth—whether of molten 
rock or of strange materials dense enough to make up the aver¬ 
age computed by scientists—that is as ii one had secured a sort of 
hold on the earth’s axis itself, in this wondrous journey with the earth. 
But to come to read the history of the surface of the farm, to look 
through the centuries and follow the work of the frost in the fissures 
of the rocks, as season by season it has rent the solid layers ; to fol¬ 
low the delicate chemical action of the atmosphere in oxidation, and 
of water in dissolving out the cements and soluble portions until the 
result is soil—the clay from granite still retaining its quartz and mica 
in sand and scales, the pure clay of slate rocks, the marl from lime¬ 
stone, the sand from sandstone—then will they have some conception 
of the work nature has done on the farm. 
But that is not all. The surface bears record,, too, of that epoch 
when the polar ice-cap was pulled low down over the face of the 
earth, as far as Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa. Every where is to be found 
the drift or loose material transported by the ice. 
In the quieter geological ages succeeding floods have at rare in¬ 
tervals shifted the soil, and water in gentle rains and streams have 
worn away and transported soil from one place, to be deposited and 
rearranged in another. 
The vegetation of unknown centuries of summers has enriched 
the surface with vegetable mould. This, too, being disturbed and 
moved more or less in the ceaseless circulation of water, even to the 
washing bare ot hills, when deprived of protecting forests, down to 
:he crude gravel and clay. 
This, the history of the farm, is a history surely fit for the home 
pf man. The inheritance of the farm as a birth-place is like a bit of 
right to the earth, remaining from Eden. 
But this is the farm that boys leave with the impression that there 
s room on it for only driving work ; a struggle to get the ground 
Dlanted in the spring, a fight with weeds and potato-bugs through 
:he summer ; a hot, hard job of harvesting and weeks of tedious 
:orn-husking in the fall, with the endless circle of chores especially 
iggravated for winter. Girls, too, rebel at the drudgery they find on 
:he farm, and escape, if possible, to the reeking factories or nerve- 
exhausting school rooms. 
But through all their lives I doubt if farm-bred boys and girls can 
ever forget some of the charms of the farm. I think springtime must 
bring memories of the dell where the earliest flowers bloomed, and a 
vision of the deepest-tinted Hepaticas, the delicate Dicentras and ferns, 
and the handfulls of Violets gathered there, perhaps accompanied with 
anconscious repining that the farm had not more room for them. 
Why should it not have ? When colleges are turning students 
)ut of their time-honored doors for study of nature, and prentice 
